In a discussion the question was asked, “If Obama is such a bad president, what does that make Bush?” Here’s my take on a few things that the left use against Bush.
Was Bush a great president? No, but he was the right president for the time. While people like to brag on the Clinton “Surplus” they always forget that Bush was sworn in at the start of a recession. They act like the Bush tax cuts were simply to favor the rich… he cut taxes and ended the recession just in time for 9/11.
There are those on the left that try to make out that the Bush administration knew of the attacks in advance and did nothing to stop it. That’s as silly as the one’s on the right who believe that 9/11 was an inside job by our government and that there was no hijacking, no planes and no terrorist. The government did it all. Was information available that would have led anyone to think that 20 terrorist were going to hijack 4 planes at the same time and crash them? No, not even remotely.
Could the aftermath of 9/11 have been handled differently? Sure it could but that doesn’t mean that it could have been handled better. Bush pulled all of America together, as one people. That was his job at the time and he did it well. He was pointedly blunt with our enemies and our allies rushed to our side. President Obama has been pointedly blunt with the American people and our allies and it seems that he has covered for our enemies. A Muslim shouting Allah Akbar kills 13 people at fort Hood and it’s called work place violence.
Now let’s talk about the wars. It seems that people have forgotten what really went on and have made up there own versions. I’m going to stick with the war in Iraq because that seems to be the most contentious one. I have saw people posting about Bush going into Iraq to get Al qaeda out and ended up with al qaeda in charge but al qaeda was never the question in Iraq. Iraq was strictly about a threat to America.
Why would we think that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? Well, it could be because they used chemical weapons on the kurds in there own country. Maybe it was because after the first Gulf war the UN found and helped to destroy tons of chemicals.
http://www.iraqwatch.org/profiles/chemical.html
By the time that 1998 rolled around it was believed that Saddam Hussein had rebuilt the stock of weapons and President Clinton had bombed suspected sites in Iraq. Clinton signed the Saddam Removal Act in to law in 1998. Democrats everywhere supported the war. It was only in Bushes 2nd term that the left decided that Bush had lied, Remember all of the pictures of Bush being hanged, being shot, be burnt, the Bush mask. All of the things that so offend the left if the same is done to Obama they heap on Bush.
The UN inspectors would search through Iraq and when they named the next place to look, they were denied and kicked out of the country. This happened over and over. There were 14 UN resolutions against Iraq and Iraq ignored them all.
Let me get the “Blood for oil” out of the way here. The United States has not profited from any oil that has been sold from Iraq just as it did not profit from Kuwait when Iraq attacked it in the first Gulf War. I just saw a meme with Dick Cheneys picture and the claim that Halliburton made $39,000,000,000 off of the war. Maybe they did, they are a huge corporation. Now other than working there at one time, Dick Cheney has nothing to do with Halliburton. Now, put the money in perspective, Halliburton makes X number of dollars over 13 – 14 years and the US government makes twice that off of student loans EVERY YEAR. Think about that.
Back to Iraq and WMD. The main reason that it was believed that Iraq still had chemical weapons and was running a nuclear program was because that was what Saddam Hussein wanted the world to believe. His defecting military members believed that he had them, after the war began, captured military believed that he had them. Saddam played a huge bluff and he got called.
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Now today, June 29 2014 we have new news
“Chemical weapons produced at the Al Muthanna facility, which Isis today seized, are believed to have included mustard gas, Sarin, Tabun, and VX.
Here is the CIA’s file on the complex.
Stockpiles of chemical munitions are still stored there. The most dangerous ones have been declared to the UN and are sealed in bunkers.
Although declared, the bunkers contents have yet to be confirmed.
These areas of the compound pose a hazard to civilians and potential blackmarketers.
Numerous bunkers, including eleven cruciform shaped bunkers were exploited. Some of the bunkers were empty. Some of the bunkers contained large quantitiesof unfilled chemical munitions, conventional munitions, one-ton shipping containers, old disabled production equipment (presumed disabled under UNSCOM supervision), and other hazardous industrial chemicals.”
“The remaining chemical weapons from Saddam Hussein’s regime are stored in two sealed bunkers, both located at the Al Muthanna Chemicals Weapons Complex, a large site in the western desert some 80km north west of Baghdad.
This was the principal manufacturing plant for both chemical agents and munitions during Saddam Hussein’s rule.
Thousands of tonnes of chemical weapons were produced, stored and deployed by the Saddam Hussein regime. Iraq used these weapons during the Iran – Iraq War (1980 to 1988) and against the Kurds in Halabja in 1988.
16.32 Isis jihadists have seized a chemical weapons facility built by Saddam Hussein which contains a stockpile of old weapons, State Department officials have told the Wall Street Journal:”
Can anyone explain to me where these chemicals came from if there were no chemicals were in Iraq?
There is one person and one person only to blame for the war in Iraq and that is Saddam Hussein.
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Imagine post 9/11 and the country is being threatened with WMD’s and the President does nothing and VX gas is released in the New York subway. The united States went to war with Iraq because it had too. The chance could not be taken. In going to war Bush was up front with the American people that this would be a long and drawn out war, Obama pulled us out of Iraq and the country is much worse off.
Let me finish with another nonsense meme that the left loves to put out, “The right is racist because they only started caring about the deficit after Obama became president.” For the most part we didn’t worry about the deficit. We had ran deficit for years so nothing was new… until TARP. Now this was under Bush, the bank bailouts of hundreds of billions of dollars opened peoples eyes. A yes vote for TARP cost many republicans their position and caused some to resign. The battle of the dollar was on and Bush was the President. Obama came in throwing gas on the fire with the waste of the stimulus and programs that were going to cost the country, businesses and the people money all the while people were losing their jobs. The government was blind to this.
Signing the Patriot Act was another dumb ass move by Bush but then Obama signed it too including adding indefinite detention to the NDAA.
Any more Questions just ask?
A Gunslinger Looks At The World 